Summary of “Why Do Smart People Do Foolish Things?”

Though often confused with intelligence, critical thinking is not intelligence. Critical thinking is a collection of cognitive skills that allow us to think rationally in a goal-orientated fashion, and a disposition to use those skills when appropriate. Critical thinking predicts a wide range of life events. We asked people to complete an inventory of life events and take a critical thinking assessment. The critical thinking assessment measures 5 components of critical thinking skills including verbal reasoning, argument analysis, hypothesis testing, probability and uncertainty, decision-making, and problem-solving. Repeatedly, we found that critical thinkers experience fewer negative life events. People who were strong on either intelligence or critical thinking experienced fewer negative events, but critical thinkers did better. Anyone can improve their critical thinking skills: Doing so, we can say with certainty, is a smart thing to do.